Hard to believe, but there was a time when working 60 to 80 hours a week in commercial real estate was glamorous.

And in the days when money was being made hand over fist, it was. New brokers came into the industry as brokerage firms attempted to keep up with the booming market by hiring more bodies.

Now that the party’s over, though, principals and brokers alike say that most of those new brokers have not given up their seats on the bandwagon, partly because of the lack of better career options. They are, however, ready for the next upswing, smarter and hungrier.

After working in construction management in Washington, D.C., Bo Tyler started work as an affiliate broker with Eakin Partners in June 2006. Tyler, now 34, already had gotten his real estate license while in college and was the son of two real-estate pros. So while it wasn’t the glamour that drew him in, the glitz was there.

“With it kind of booming, it looked like a lot of people were doing really well,” Tyler said. “It was good until the world collapsed.”

As commercial real estate slowed in 2008, and bottomed out in 2009, Tyler and other brokers began to wonder: When was the exodus of their broker peers going to begin?

So far, brokers said, it hasn’t. That’s yet another quality unique to this current real estate bust, according to Dick Fleming, a 30-year veteran and a principal of Nashville Commercial Real Estate Services.

“There are very few alternative jobs available,” Fleming said.

When real estate took a hit in the early 1990s after the savings and loan crisis, or in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks, other industry sectors were spared. Struggling brokers who wanted an out could find one, Fleming said.

“Really, the past 18 months to two years, finding something else hasn’t been the easiest,” said J.T. Martin, a broker with Southeast Venture. “Not that I’ve looked.”

Martin joined Southeast three years ago after working in health care, soliciting doctors to refer their patients to the Saint Thomas Health Services network. He didn’t see a lot of brokers focusing on health care at the time, so he found a home at Southeast, where he leads the firm’s health care real estate division.

“I didn’t realize the bottom was going to drop out of it like it did,” Martin, 29, said.

In a sense, though, it’s just as well that it did.

“I guess it’s always a bad year when you start,” Martin said, echoing a point made by several brokers. “When you start there’s still a huge learning curve.”

“I wouldn’t have known if the market was good then,” said Martin, who was named 2009’s Rising Star by the Nashville chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

At Cassidy Turley, 13 brokers have been added since 2006, according to managing principal Doug Brandon.

“It was glamorous,” he said. “(The Pinnacle at Symphony Place) was going up. Cool Springs, with Crescent (Resources), was booming. It was a good story to tell.”

Interest in the profession has since cooled. Last year, Cassidy Turley hired one broker, who happened to come from Memphis with experience.

When things were booming, Brandon would get “six, eight, 10 calls a month from people wanting to get in the business. And now I maybe get six, eight or 10 a year.”

Brandon said no brokers have left Cassidy Turley because of the economy. “I’m not saying there aren’t a few that are probably on life support,” he said.

Micah Lacher, a principal of local real estate holding company Anchor Investments who began his commercial real estate career as the industry began to rebound from the 2001 dip, said he still recommends the career to others.

“I’ve actually told a lot of guys that it’s a good time to get in the business and learn,” he said. However, he said he tempers that with realism about the business, including the point that it might take 18 months to give it a fair shake.

Brandon said he almost tries to scare potential recruits when he’s setting their expectations.

“If they’re not working 10, 12 hours a day, they’re not going to make it in this business. Minimum,” he said. “That hasn’t changed.” The rewards, though, are still there.

“If they don’t have six figures in their goal, they’re shorting themselves,” Brandon said.

Brandon said the commission structure for brokers has not changed during his five years at the helm of Cassidy Turley, though he said their jobs have become more “consultative.” Companies, he said, are looking for more long-term relationships with their real estate brokers, requiring them to dig deeper into the options and variables that will save a client the most on their lease.

The Freshmen

Brandon and other long-term brokers sense a change in the newest crop of professionals, those now coming out of college.

“The bulk of them just aren’t committed,” he said. “They’re (more interested in) having a life than working 60 to 80 hours a week.”

As Brandon noted, commercial brokerage is a personal business. Being successful requires networking and face time.

According to Fleming, the latest professional generation is morphing that concept.

“They want to do it faster and better,” he said. “It’s less relationship oriented. The social networking is so impersonal, but it’s immediate.”

They are, though, exceptionally bright, he said. “They know where to get answers,” he said, and get them quickly.

Fleming and Brandon feel confident about the futures of their young brokers.

Brandon meets with Cassidy Turley’s youngest brokers once a month. He recalled telling them, because of the amount of time they were investing, that, “When this thing turns, you’re going to be so far ahead of the game.”

Tyler agreed.

“I would say that I learned more as things got tougher than I did when things seemed to be really rolling,” he said. “It’s very helpful to be able to talk about cycles, and this enables me to see a cycle very quickly.”

Like Tyler, Martin, who set aside time to achieve his CCIM (certified commercial investment member) designation, has no plans to find new work as the economy improves.

Those brokers who have stuck it out, he said, are the ones “who are going to be here in 10, 20 years,” he said.

Afterall, “If this is the worst it’s been in 80 years,” Martin said, “I don’t plan on being here in 80 years.”